


How Medic learned to stop worrying and love Jarate

by rex



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Jarate, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-15
Updated: 2009-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:15:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rex/pseuds/rex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme fill: "Jarate with Sniper/Anyone else (preferably an OCDomfgcleanlinessisgodliness Medic)." Not everyone shares Sniper's enthusiasm for jar-based weaponry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Medic learned to stop worrying and love Jarate

You had to walk a thin line with dangerous animals, Sniper knew. You had to go slow and steady in order to keep them from panicking, but if you gave them enough space to get their heads around the problem, they'd realise that the whole issue could be fixed by tearing you apart. You had to keep them thinking more of escape than of taking you down, had to keep them poised to flee right up until you were dead on top of them and could deal the final blow. Low voices, steady movements.

"Carn, sweetheart," Sniper said soothingly to the empty room, one hand behind his back. "I ain't gonna hurt ya."

"Fahr zur Hölle!" Medic was trying to go for that Tell Me Where It Hurts (And How To Make It Hurt Even More) face, Sniper could see, the frightening one that could send the best of them running in fear from the examination rooms. The whole effect was ruined, however, by the fact that Medic was cowering behind a desk with only his eyes and frown peeking up above the edge, making him look like nothing so much as a malevolent stapler. "Get that filth away from me!"

"Wot, that? Don't have any on me. 'Cause you hate it. So I ain't gonna try to get you to like it any more."

"Lies!" Medic's eyes flickered to the bonesaw on the desk, and Sniper willed himself not to sweat. He was fond of his bones the way they were, bung knee and all.

"Mate, maaaate. Don't y'think this is all a bit ridiculous?" It was time for a serious tone to cut through the tension, something to dial down Medic's panic. The eyes shot back to him, brows knitted in confusion. "You're hidin' under a table," Sniper explained patiently. "Unless you were the one that texta'd a moustache on Sasha yesterday, y'don't have a reason."

The four visible inches of Medic frowned, a little shamefaced at the realisation that a professional man in his forties was hiding like a child in a couch fort. Sniper, a man with a lifelong fondness for tree forts, did not think Medic's panicked choice of refuge was particularly silly, although on the whole he would have preferred that it hadn't contained incredibly sharp medical implements.

Sniper shrugged innocently and let his body move with the gesture, slipping forward again like he had been the whole time, slowly inching towards the desk. Nearly had him. "I just want to have a friendly word with ya. You didn't mind it those other times we had our little chats, eh?"

(He most certainly had not. Sniper's command of the German language was growing every week, at least when concerning anatomy, commands, entreaties, and, because it was Medic, furious insults about his parentage, performance, and personal hygiene.)

"But you were... You have that..." Medic looked down thoughtfully, much to Sniper's delight, but then rallied himself, much to Sniper's instant horror. "This is a trick!"

Medic bolted. Sniper threw. Apparently the secrets of the Nazi regime had included teaching their medical staff how to body-check like dodgem cars, and Sniper crashed into the wall as Medic went hurtling out of the room, the jar of Jarate that had been hidden behind Sniper's back going off-target and smashing on nothing except an suspiciously photocopied diploma.

Sniper grabbed at his bruised ribs and, grinning, gave chase.

Medic was embarrassingly fit. He may have had ten years on most the team, but he had at least two minutes on the mile over them. In this chase, however, he was at a disadvantage: Sniper only had to run after, but Medic had to run _away_.

They went over Demo, passed out but still grumbling in the mess room. Heavy was wandering down a corridor: Medic, used to working around him, didn't miss a beat in flattening himself around the other man and escaping; Sniper, not quite as nimble, nearly lost an eye on an artillery shell as he bounced off Heavy's chest. Medic left jackbooted prints over the blueprints Engie had spread out on the barn floor; Sniper ducked his way under an inexplicable series of plywood cows.

Trying to barrel through an uncooperative doorway-filling Scout was what eventually undid Medic. Paranoid about being caught for giving Sasha an extravagant moustache, a panicky Scout assumed that Medic was there to help deliver an equally extravagant beating. Pushing past him had turned out to be like wrestling a bag of smartmouthed coathangers, and it had cost Medic time.

Sniper managed to grab a handful of coattails on the stairwell, and Medic spat expletives and fricatives and god-knows-what-else at him as Sniper dragged him down.

Sniper rolled Medic over and smirked down at him, hat askew. His sense of romance, riled up by the chase, demanded that he growl a low, lusty "I'm going to have my wicked way with you now, m'darling," into Medic's ear.

His body, utterly defeated by having to do something other than sit there, pull triggers, and occasionally smoke, translated the smoothness of his line into a wheezing "oh god, me lungs, I think I broke me bloody lungs".

"An appealing idea." Medic had the gall to look completely unaffected, save for a slight mess of hair sticking appealingly to his brow. It was, Sniper thought, struggling for breath, completely unfair. "Well?" he asked, with an undertone of wariness. "Now what?"

Oh god, Sniper thought, don't give the bloody fool another reason to make a break for it. Maybe another tactic was in order. How did you get a doctor to get over that whole 'bodily fluids aren't hygienic' thing? Wait, that was the wrong question.

How did you get a _mad_ doctor to like something?

"Well, seein' as I'm sweatin' like a dog in Chinatown, I reckon we could head down to th' showers."

Medic remained suspicious. "And then?"

"And then we're gonna get all hygienic."

"And?"

"And then... and then I'm gonna tell you all about," Sniper wriggled his eyebrows suggestively, "kidney failure."

"What?"

"If you're good, I'll read you out the fine print, the stuff about not even feeling y'own organs shuttin' down."

Medic eyed him up warily. "You don't feel a thing?"

"I'd cross my heart, but I'm not sure if it's still in the same place. Side-effects and all."

"Hmm."

"If you're lucky," Sniper purred, "I'll let you dose me up."

There was a flush on Medic's face that had nothing to do with their run. "Well..."

Sniper helped Medic up, and taking him by the elbow, lead him off towards the showers. "Banned in seventy-three countries. Did I mention the health warnings? Never seen so many skulls in one place, mate..."


End file.
